


neither ascent nor decline

by Nemonus



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: F/M, bittersweet fluff, fireteam heartbreak, may have a part 2 one day but tbh it is a mystery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-30
Updated: 2018-09-30
Packaged: 2019-07-20 22:09:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16146557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nemonus/pseuds/Nemonus
Summary: Toland and Wei Ning acquire Tincture of Queensfoil long before anyone is supposed to.





	neither ascent nor decline

****

“Shopping list, here we go.” Wei Ning pulled fruits and cheesecloth-wrapped bundles out of the woven bag in gauntleted handfuls. “Bacon, check. Apples, check. Rice … that soda Omar likes, and … your magic potion.”

Eris scooped up the blue and black bottle before Toland could finish shuffling toward it. At first, she thought that whatever Wei Ning and Toland had brought back had spilled across the table in the small, cluttered fireteam house. Inky streaks leaked from the bottle, then dissolved into cloud. Despite its appearance, the cold condensation didn’t stain her hands.

“What is this?” Eris looked from one to the other, meeting Wei’s golden-brown eyes and Toland’s muddy green ones.

“Tincture of Queensfoil, brave Strife,” he said.

A chill took her, not unpleasantly. _Strife_ was a play on her name, one they had bantered back and forth last time they had walked in the City. The name of the potion, though, was unknown to her.

“A vain experiment, I am afraid,” he said. “Such a deathly rare piece has only limited use. Reefborn Awoken speak of it as a gateway into the Ascendant Plane. But it must be opened in certain places, under certain signs, and those are unknown to the City. This …” 

He held his gloved hand out, inviting. She passed the bottle to him.

“This is a key without a lock. Or perhaps, simply a fine vintage,” Toland said.

 The chill had almost let Eris go.

Wei Ning said, “So we down it and see what happens?”

Toland waggled the bottle at her. Black smoke continued to escape from it in spiral tufts. “Yes…”

“Really?”

“I don’t think we should—” Eris started.

“If we die on Crota’s blade, none of us will taste it,” Toland said. “If we find the lock, we will find a locksmith. I will not let this be a relic. Not when Wei Ning worked so hard to find it.” He gave her a sour smile. 

“I mean, I just bought it with _your_ glimmer,” Wei said. “Let’s go on the roof and see if something weird happens.” She almost ran for the door. 

As the three of them exited in a jostle, Eris felt Toland catch her by the arm. His hand snugged into the bend of her elbow. When she looked up he was very close, his long, thin black hair curtaining both of them in. She wanted to lean toward him, and did so only barely. 

“I will not take it if you don’t permit it,” he muttered. “Strife and chaos are not precisely equal.” 

_He’s asking permission. He cares about my opinion._ The cold subsided to a shiver, a heaviness in her spine. _If anything weird happens, Wei Ning will kill it. It can’t be worse than an Ahamkara._ “It’s okay.” As she moved away, she brushed his hair off her shoulder with her bare hand. After seconds Eris couldn’t possibly have counted, she and Toland followed Wei.

By the time Eris and Toland climbed the ladder, Wei had already sat down, her legs straight out in front of her on a brightly patterned rug. 

“Here we go,” said Wei. “Give me that void juice.”

Toland looked skeptical. Even his willingness to experiment paled in comparison to Wei Ning’s thrill-seeking. “Leave some for the rest of us.” 

He handed her the bottle, then sat beside her Warlock-fashion, on his knees. Eris sat with her legs folded next to him, not quite touching his side. 

After a quick drink,Wei Ning handed the bottle back to Toland.

“The effect would be immediate if anything was likely to happen, but, remember, it is a key without a lock,” he said. Without taking his portion, he handed the bottle to Eris.

She watched Wei Ning watch the City. Nothing unusual wracked Wei’s body, except perhaps for her uncharacteristic stillness. Eris sipped. What she had expected to be frozen cold was lukewarm, but otherwise tasted like tap water—unremarkable, scrubbed of both purity and contaminants. She had drank better simply from wild, clear springs in the forest. Still, it was with a haze of expectation and wonder that she passed what was left to Toland. 

His expression when he drank it was unreadable; perhaps some scorn, perhaps a careful smoothing out of his gaze as he watched her watch him. He set the vial on the rug and watched the skyline.

In front of their roof, a block of flats was hung with brightly-colored flags. Behind it, a water tower and a generation station added their irregular silhouettes to the Last City before the skyscrapers started in the distance. Nothing happened. The view remained mundane, untouched by any suggestion of the Hive. 

After careful breaths like the counts during a stakeout, Eris looked at Toland again, not disguising her interest. She had expected him to have a victorious expression, had imagined rapture, so the way his whole form sagged in grief shocked her. He blinked at watery eyes. The skin around his scar even seemed more deeply furrowed. He might look like this if his library had been destroyed, or if someone’s Ghost had died. 

“Nada!” Wei Ning declared, so loud that Eris flinched. Wei jumped to her feet and clapped Toland on the shoulder. “Congratulations. You were right about the potion doing nothing. Do you feel spookier? I feel maybe a little bit spookier. But it’s not great. Let me know if you need me to pick up anything else using your glimmer.”

She jumped off the roof. Eris heard paving stones crack one story below. 

Eris looked at Toland with what she hoped was an expression of cautious concern. In general he did not rage at disappointment; he took what energy that might have required and proselytized at victory instead. She struggled to remember when she had ever seen him fail before. His behavior did not usually lend itself to the idea that he might one day need comfort. Now, though, she wanted to ease his sadness. She wanted, she realized with a slight start, to regain the expression he had worn just minutes earlier, of hopeful experimentation. He had wanted _badly_ for it to work, even while insisting that it wouldn’t. 

When he spoke of the Hive it was often in tones that flirted with admiration. Their beauty was disgusting and their hideousness beauty, to hear Toland tell it, and they needed to be killed in part because their tactics were so exquisitely effective. He wanted to take some of that beauty for himself, and it had just been denied him in a form no more dramatic than a cup of water on any table. He wanted ascendance as badly as—

“I’m sorry it didn’t work,” Eris said. 

He sighed, turned to her, and tapped the vial pensively.

He wanted ascendance as badly as she wanted him. 

In another world, she might have picked up the vial. She might have traced her fingers over the black filigree and pressed on the cool, black residue at the mouth of the bottle. She might have touched her fingers against Toland’s lips, to tell him that they together could settle his torturous ambition and find comfort on the more mortal plane. But she did not have the words and she did not have the bravery, even though she had faced down dragons. _Brave Strife, ha._ She couldn’t even comfort him. 

_It was a dangerous potion anyway. If we had been in danger, I wouldn’t have to worry about this._ She wasn’t sure whether that was a relief or a disappointment. 

In the time she spent indecisive, Toland rallied. He sat up straighter and pulled the bottle to him. “Another artifact for the collection,” he said. He shook himself with a rustle of Warlock robes, settling back in his usual disinterested slouch. “Thank you for joining me, brave Strife.”

She considered Wei irreverence and could not manage it. Instead she again reached for him and toyed with his hair. Unexpectedly he leaned into her touch, pressing smooth skin and the slightly raised line of scarring against her palm. Their eyes caught. The chill vanished into her spine, leaving her energized. The shiver hummed like a Sparrow. 

They were all working toward something. Wei Ning had her thrills, Toland the Hive, Eris the deep, unknown waters of a Hunter’s wilderness. Wasn’t it right to comfort someone who had not achieved his goal? Who could see it, just out of reach? 

She tucked his hair behind his ear, taking her time with loose and graying strands while his eyes lidded further. “It’s not all bad,” she muttered. “Without the sight of the ascendant plane, don’t you get a clearer look at this world?” 

They sat like that for a while, Toland unusually silent, once pressing his tongue over his lips. 

* * *

 

_“Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,_

_But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,_

_Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,_

_Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,_

_There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.”_

 

_T.S. Eliot_


End file.
